Blood Orange – Harriet Tyce

Alison has it all. A doting husband, adorable daughter, and a career on the rise – she’s just been given her first murder case to defend. But all is never as it seems…

Just one more night. Then I’ll end it.

Alison drinks too much. She’s neglecting her family. And she’s having an affair with a colleague whose taste for pushing boundaries may be more than she can handle.

I did it. I killed him. I should be locked up.

Alison’s client doesn’t deny that she stabbed her husband – she wants to plead guilty. And yet something about her story is deeply amiss. Saving this woman may be the first step to Alison saving herself.

I’m watching you. I know what you’re doing.

But someone knows Alison’s secrets. Someone who wants to make her pay for what she’s done, and who won’t stop until she’s lost everything….

 

I received a review copy from the publishers.

 

Alison is a defence lawyer with a successful career, a loving husband and daughter, a drink problem and she is having an affair. Her life is complicated and to be frank she is not a very likeable character.

Allison’s husband is rapidly reaching the end of his teather with her late nights, drunkeness and a constant unreliability when it comes to caring for their daughter Matilda. Allison’s husband is massively put upon throughout the story but I didn’t warm to him.  Matilda was terrific and I felt sorry for her being trapped in a tale with these two parents.

We follow Alison as she is asked to assist in the defence of a woman who has killed her husband. She is assisting a second lawyer who also happens to be the man she is having an affair with.  He isn’t a very nice character either.

Blood Orange is a very well written character drama. The players in the story are suitably flawed that their lives became compelling reading.  I didn’t like them much but I still wanted to know what was going to happen to them. The payoff at the end when the threads and clues all pulled together was (to me) very unexpected but nastily entertaining.

So taking great care to avoid spoilers…Blood Orange is a domestic thriller and a legal drama.  Against all the turmoil in Alison’s life she balances the home life challenges and gets on with the day job.  It takes a strain on her and the vices and excesses will show through the cracks. Harriet Tyce does a great job keeping her characters on the right side of sanity. Until even she cannot stop them tipping over…

Powerful storytelling and worthy of the praise being sung by authors and reviewers.

 

Blood Orange is published by Wildfire and is available in hardback, digital and audiobook format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Orange-Harriet-Tyce/dp/1472252756/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1551311728&sr=8-1